Original Article

On Social Justice and Political Struggle

By

Omar Swartz*

This essay argues the necessity for political struggle by
questioning and confronting the way in which legal and moral authority are
conceptualized currently in the United States. Through such questioning,
Americans are encouraged to take a critical view of their own feelings for the
society in which they live and to reject the limitations of much mainstream
political thought, which are hegemonic, anachronistic, and subversive to the
noble American ideals of freedom, justice, and equality for all. Stated bluntly,
my goal is to encourage Americans to demand fundamental changes in the interests
of a just political and economic system.

The notion of social justice championed here embraces an
equitable distribution of social resources, including nutrition, shelter, health
care, and education. These resources can be reconceptualized as public goods so
the ultimate aim of the state is to ensure that all people enjoy access to these
goods. My call for social justice is not limited to the United States. Rather,
my thesis is that social justice must be enacted on both the domestic and
international levels and that the United States' legal system often interferes
with these goals. In rejecting nationalism, we realize that the United States
can no longer privilege itself at the expense of other nations. The American
ideals of equality and freedom are meaningless if they do not denote substantive
equality and freedom from suffering for all human beings. No one should profit
from the suffering of another. Human identification can be grounded in a
morality of inclusivity and the goal of culture is to devise social and economic
institutions to achieve this on an international level. As Richard Rorty notes,
the goal of critical analysis is to wake “us up to the possible obsolescence
of the vocabularies in which we conduct our moral and political deliberations
and frame our utopian visions.” [1] The old vision, that of free-market
wealth raising all boats, needs to be reassessed. With close scrutiny, we may
acknowledge that “a rising tide will raise all boats only if the government
constantly interferes to make sure it does.” [2] In this regard, the government
often needs prompting.

More specifically, “social justice” means a political and
structural commitment by society to direct the resources of modern civilization
to benefit all people, particularly those “who are economically, socially,
politically, and/or culturally underresourced.” [3] An implicit assumption of a
social justice perspective is that the integrity of any community suffers when
some of its members are systematically deprived of their dignity or equality and
that structural poverty is a major contributor to this condition. [4] Structural
poverty is defined as the institutionalized condition in which the social and
economic marginalization of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world
is the logical and anticipated end of government and intergovernmental policies
that maximize tremendous wealth for a privileged few. [5]

Structural poverty is pervasive, perhaps even emblematic of
the world, in the opening years of the twenty-first century. In response, this
essay encourages a collective effort to redescribe the legal and economic
conditions that contribute to structural poverty to enable inclusive and fair
communities to emerge within a condition of pervasive substantive
equality-defined here as equality in the results of social intercourse, equality
in educational and economic opportunity, and a commitment by the legal order to
human health and dignity for all. [6] Unfortunately, what we take in this country
to be constitutional law often hinders this goal of creating domestic and
international conditions of substantive equality [7]. The Constitution, therefore,
should be changed so that a new, more humane social order can emerge. As U.S.
society becomes more humane, our foreign policy and cultural influence will
reflect that moral growth. In other words, if the United States is not committed
to social justice, then the effort to achieve a socially just world will be made
much more difficult, if not impossible.

In challenging our constitutional order in the United States,
we should affirm that the future should be created by those living in the
present and does not need to be limited by the terms and conditions of the past.
A fundamental term and condition of the past was that the United States was to
have a limited government; the Constitution was framed to provide an instrument
for insuring that the government would wield little power-particularly power to
redress social inequality. This is an historical-not an ideological-explanation.
Social relationships throughout European and American society at the time of the
American Revolution were profoundly and structurally unequal (divided on class,
gender, racial, and religious lines). This inequality was accepted as a given at
the time. The struggle for American independence was not intended to be
egalitarian-it sought political freedom vis-à-vis England, not social equality
for people lower on the social hierarchy. It was not until a few years after the
Constitution was developed that the French Revolution challenged social
inequality throughout Europe. The French Revolution was bitterly resisted by the
elites in the United States, who prepared to go to war against France to keep
its radical ideas from American shores. [8]

Further, the economy of the United States was, at the time
the Constitution was drafted, primarily agricultural, with most free citizens
managing their own family farms. No other concerted power source during the
Colonial period threatened people. It was enough for the government to protect
citizens against attacks by Native Americans, slave revolts, provocations from
European powers and to formalize commercial relationships. Other than these
functions, the elites wanted to be left alone. The thought that the government
owed any responsibility to intervene in the social hierarchy at the time was
anathema to the drafters of the Constitution, who strenuously maintained that
the government had no business interfering with what were assumed to be “natural”
inequalities and hierarchies.

Since the eighteenth century, political, social, and economic
conditions have changed dramatically, rendering the original Constitution
anachronistic in many important respects. Popular assumptions of equality and
community have changed since the Colonial period. To its credit, the
Constitution has reflected that evolution, although almost two hundred years
passed in order to do so. The economic and power relationships that
contextualized the drafting of the Constitution also no longer exist. Today,
power “in American society is by no means limited to the arena of government.
In fact, an equally significant locus of societal power lies in the realm of
economic activity, especially, the giant corporation, where decisions are made
that shape the society's work force, consumer market, and general economic
condition.” [9] Unlike the struggle for social equality, the Constitution has not
adapted much to reflect these changes. [10] In Rorty's words:

The existence of a moral community which can plausibly
and without qualification identify itself as “we, the people of the United
States” is still a project rather than an actuality. In a few respects, my
country is closer to accomplishing this project now than it has . . . ever
been, thanks to the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s and to the
continuing pressure exerted by feminists. In most respects, however, it is
losing ground. For the gap between rich and poor Americans is widening
steadily, and the latter are increasingly bereft of hope for their
children's future. [11]

In light of the rise of corporate power, almost wholly
un-contemplated by the Framers of the Constitution in the eighteenth century,
the Constitutional limitations on government are simply outdated (most notably
in the economic realm). Far from protecting us from the government, the
Constitution protects corporations from the people. As one commentator observes,
“Limited government means limited democracy and hence limited mass
participation. By taking the most vital questions having to do with the
structure of the state and its relation to society and placing them in a realm
high above society's reach, it devitalizes politics.” [12] In other words, the
Constitution took many important issues off the political table.

Once removed from state power, the question of economic
justice disappeared from the realm of popular politics, making it nearly
impossible for a popular majority to use the government to pursue a sustained
policy of substantive equality. The Constitution thus drained the new Republic
of the very democracy in whose name the United States was established. The
result is a cult that contributes to “America's solipsistic political
culture,” [13]
one establishing a faith in America that interferes with the practical
day-to-day political work of creating a society that justifies our admiration of
the Constitution. As Daniel Lazare explains, this “faith does not shore up
democracy and civil liberties, but, quite the contrary, weakens them by
shielding America's pre-modern, fundamentally irrational constitutional system
from criticism and analysis.” [14] Without such criticism, our own ability to
engage with the political issues of our day deteriorates:

Intellectual deterioration leads to political decay,
which leads to the sort of enervation that is now gripping the American
system. The problem is not that Americans obey their ancient Constitution
too little, as so many liberals seem to think. The problem is that they
defer to it too much without considering why they should be controlled by a
plan of government drawn up by a group of merchants and slaveowners at the
dawn of the modern era. [15 ]

Analogously, an atheist, with good warrant, could criticize
religious faith. However, the same community of believers-as typified by the
social gospel movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and by
some churches' engagement in the Civil Rights movement in the middle of the
twentieth century-could proudly retort, and with equally good warrant, that,
regardless of their faith, they nevertheless succeeded in specific concrete
social objectives (i.e., feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, publicizing the
need for social justice, etc.). In more modern terms and from a social justice
perspective, George W. Bush's endorsement of the so-called “faith-based
initiative” is not interesting because of the “faith” part of the program,
although such faith may be a persuasive tool for enlisting committed volunteers.
What matters is what these organizations accomplish. A congregation full of
faithful millionaires who do nothing to help those in need is rightly recognized
by society (and by some Christians) as hypocrites (recall the often-ignored
Biblical idiom that it "is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God)." [16]

My argument is that the above is no different with those who
profess faith in the Constitution or in democracy. The rallying calls of “Liberty”
and “Freedom” are indeed persuasive and appealing, and they do encourage
people to volunteer for a cause. Nevertheless, the value of faith in such
ideographs lies in the practical work we do. A constitutional atheist such as
myself can criticize, with good warrant, constitutional faith: to show that the
Constitution (or what we take to be the Rule of Law, more generally) is
undeserving of our faith and may be subject to intense scrutiny and reform with
the goal of making it more equitable. This said, the task for the constitutional
faithful now becomes clear. A gauntlet has been laid down-the job of
constitutional apologists is to respond (as does the religious believer) and
provide evidence for their proclamation-“your academic objections
notwithstanding, look at all these good deeds. The Constitution works and it
works for all!” American cultural wars are often fought over such challenges.

Barriers to Critical Thinking in the United States

A goal of critical writing is to illustrate how the past came
to be and how it now, to a large extent, limits our moral imaginations (as in
the normalization of poverty and the institutionalization of greed).
Understanding this, we can free ourselves from the restraints of the past and
from thought that no longer serves our contemporary needs, which can be
egalitarian and universal. When the weight of past superstitions, overly narrow
identifications, and dysfunctional moral and economic assumptions gives way to a
new conception of human beings, the heavy burden placed on humanity by our
ancestors will be relieved. Achieving this change, however, requires a
significant rethinking of the past. As Americans “awake to the absurdity of
trying to force a modern society to conform to a pre-modern plan of government,
they would have no choice but to toss ancient shibboleths overboard and replace
them with something more modern and democratic.” [17] We should not shy away from
this challenge. The period for change is now; the exigence is great. The status
quo remains because Americans are not united in their opposition to social
injustice. Unfortunately, few people in the United States have a vocabulary to
perceive the issues or sense the opportunities for change. In such an
environment, social injustice thrives.

While increased critical thinking is clearly in order, most
people in our society do not find it easy, particularly because American culture
discourages it. In the words of David Rieff, “the United States is becoming if
not a culture-free zone then at least a place in which the arts and humanities
count for little compared with commerce, the entertainment industry, and
therapy.” [18] Our society discourages critical thinking in a number of ways. The
most important way in which critical thinking is discouraged is the conflation
of intellectual life in the United States with that of academic life; the
problem is compounded because the general population largely does not respect
academia. [19] Throughout the history of the United States, “popularism” has
been manifest in a pervasive anti-intellectualism (for example, in the
administrations of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, the nativism represented by
Pat Buchanan, and in the phenomena that surrounds the popularity of Rush
Limbaugh). The role models of most Americans are sports figures, entertainers,
and local or televised (often fundamentalist or quasi-fundamentalist) religious
leaders. Higher education is seen mostly as technical and professional, with
intellectuals considered irrelevant and perhaps even subversive and
anti-American. This populism finds a target in politics as well as in primary
and secondary education in the U.S.

Compared with Western Europe, which provided the intellectual
heritage that America professes to uphold, Americans, unlike their Continental
counterparts, are largely oblivious to the conversations and literatures that
have influenced the modern world. The United States seemingly has bunkered
itself dogmatically in the intellectual culture of the eighteenth century and
has not allowed itself to consider the analysis, current thinking, and new
direction of intellectual, political and cultural thought that has risen in the
more than two hundred years since the founding of the U.S. We do this at our
peril. Increasingly, Americans are perceived as arrogant, materialistic,
anti-cultural, and anti-intellectual by Europeans and much of the rest of the
world. While the U.S. has the power to force itself and its culture on the
world, the United States dilutes its substantive contributions to humanity by
its callousness toward the poor and by inundating the world with shallow
cultural forms (i.e., Coca-Cola bottles, McDonald's cheeseburgers, Hollywood
films, cosmetics, and television). With the rise of American power and arrogance
(evident since the end of the Cold War and brazenly obvious since September 11,
2001), we see, in practice, the repudiation of the Western Enlightenment.
Ironically, with this repudiation, the United States threatens its own
legitimacy as the philosophical and moral values and ideology that grounded the
American Revolution begin to evaporate.

By comparison, a crisis of legitimacy is occurring in much
the same way as the similar crisis currently affecting the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP). The legitimacy of the CCP has been evaporating with the economic
reform of the post-Maoist period (starting after Mao's death in 1976).
Historically, the legitimacy of the CCP was situated in more than 50 years (the
party was founded in 1921) of a stated Party commitment to social equality for
all Chinese (whatever the faults of Maoism, it was egalitarian). Now that the
Party leaders glorify wealth accumulation, tolerate massive corruption, and
reify the social order in a structural inequality reminiscent of the late Qing
and Republican periods of Chinese history, modern China has lost its moral
vision and its commitment to social justice. Like the United States, China is
becoming wealthy and powerful and more like the United States. While wealth and
power have the potential to be good, China, like the United States, risks
repudiating (if it has not already) its larger social and moral agendas (i.e.,
socialism in the case of China and a commitment to democracy and human rights in
the case of the United States). These agendas are essential for the
international stature of these nations; these agendas, not the nations per se,
deserve our respect. In the absence of these moral visions, the United
States-and, increasingly, China-become nothing more than self-serving bullies
undeserving of respect as political models for the twenty-first century to both
their own citizens and to the world community.

Another major and related reason why critical thinking wields
little influence in U.S. society is that the consumer culture and escapist
entertainment make conditions difficult for citizens to understand honestly
their basic human and social needs-those grounded in a healthy community and a
healthy world. [20] The very premise behind our constitutional system-all the
checks and balances against a popular democracy-is that the citizens do not
understand their wants or needs. [21] As a result, control of government and
industry rests firmly in the hands of a small, elite class and corporations that
increasingly distances themselves from the average citizen. As this distance
increases, the elite “have less and less at stake in America's future, and
more and more invested in an efficient and productive global economy-an economy
made ever more efficient and productive by the constant expansion of the global
labor market into poorer and poorer countries.” [22] The result of this trend,
Rorty warns, is of the country devolving “into hereditary economic castes.”
[23]
Such a caste system is precisely the condition that existed in England during
the colonial period and from which propagators of official American ideology
self-consciously attempt to distance themselves. This time, however, no “New
World” beckons to which to flee and start over. This time, we must make a
stand as each year our voices and our needs grow increasingly inconsequential to
the social and political elite. If we do not make a stand, we will acquiesce to
our positioning as mere spectators in the construction of our society.

Discursive Amnesia and the Problem of Dissent

At first glance, our task must seem odd and out of place in
this society that rejects political non-conformity. Americans usually are
encouraged to admire their government and to hold their culture in high respect.
Perennially, Americans consider themselves “number one.” While Americans
often believe that they live in the best country in the world, facts collected
by international organizations, such as the United Nations, suggest otherwise.
For example, in a 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) ranking of Healthy Life
Expectancy for children born in 1999, the United States was ranked #24 in the
world. According to Christopher Murry, director of the WHO's global program for
health policy, “Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if
you're an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries.” [24]
According to the report, one reason for this statistic is that in “the United
States, some groups, such as Native Americans, rural African Americans, and the
inner city poor, have extremely poor health, more characteristic of a poor
developing country than a rich industrial one.” [25] Such evidence reinforces my
central argument: American pretensions of formal equality are revealed to be
inadequate when we confront substantive differences between Americans so
extensive that expansive portions of our population are reduced to poverty
levels reminiscent of the developing world. Inequality worldwide is linked with
inequality in the U.S. Both are equally avoidable and need to be addressed
collectively.

Fundamental to the American phenomenon of self-idolatry is
what Wen Shu Lee and Philip C. Wander call “discursive amnesia,” the
collective forgetting of events and history that call into question the
apparently beneficent qualities of our current self-concepts and national
identifications. Few individuals or nations view themselves unfavorably. Yet
nation-states, which are comprised of individuals, are responsible for immense
cruelties whose practitioners find ways to keep their idealistic self-images
intact. This is the function of discursive amnesia; through it, “a group
identifies itself not only through what it publicly or officially recalls but
also through what it systematically forgets.” [26] The most difficult issues to
discuss are the ones that we do not even think about. This is a further reason
why Americans distrust intellectuals; intellectuals encourage people to resist
discursive amnesia, turning the platitudes of our politicians and official
mythology into issues that influence our most intimate lives.

Indeed, many Americans-perhaps most-believe in the
superiority of their government and their culture and point to its unparalleled
influence in the history of the world as warrant for this belief. To these
people, the kinds of issues raised here will seem foreign, subversive, and,
possibly, even anti-American. My goal is to challenge fundamentally what it
means to be an American and to encourage Americans to become critical thinkers.
Our consumerist model of culture deadens critical thought and can be countered
only through an intellectual model of a democratic society, one in which a
commitment to social justice defines the self-consciousness of most U.S.
citizens. In the words of Todd Gitlin, “What is required are challenges to
unjust monopolies of power, but what is also required is a certain generosity on
the part of all. Above all, the privileged need to commit themselves to remedy
the most bitter exclusions: those of poverty.” [27]

People are most enriched by engagement with enriching ideas.
Intellectual fulfillment is immensely more fulfilling than material engorgement.
Material wealth is heavy and divisive, interfering with the construction of
meaningful inclusive moral communities-the kind that Thomas Jefferson envisioned
as the political backbone of American society. Thus, at second glance, it should
be clear to students of American history and political science that my challenge
to the normative legal and political values of this nation is, itself, a
paradigmatic American activity. This tradition, while currently suffocating,
cannot be displaced entirely, at least in the United States as we currently
imagine it. No law, no sense of duty, and no obligation exists for Americans to
worship the state. This point was made most clear in 1943, when the U.S. Supreme
Court struck down mandatory flag salutes and daily recitation of the Pledge of
Allegiance for school children. In holding such coerced affirmations
unconstitutional, the Court declared: “If there is any fixed star in our
constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can
prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other
matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith
therein.” [28] Any attempt to coerce such conformity, the Court reasoned, creates
only the “unanimity of the graveyard.” [29]

In other words, while our actions are governed by law, our
spirits are free to probe, to question, and ultimately to reject that law and
the society reified by that law and related laws. The Constitution expects that
dissent should-indeed, must-flourish if democracy has any hope of being
meaningful. Yet, such dissent is increasingly difficult in our organizational
culture. As John Dewey notes:

Why is it, apart from our tradition of violence, that
liberty of expression is tolerated and even lauded when social affairs seem
to be going in a quiet fashion, and yet is so readily destroyed whenever
matters grow critical? The general answer, of course, is that at bottom
social institutions have habituated us to the use of force in some veiled
form. [30]

Dewey argues that the United States tolerates liberty only
when it does not threaten the status quo. To the extent that individual liberty
does threaten the status quo, “every effort is put forth to identify the
established order with the public good.” [31] Dewey's observation is as true
today as in the era in which he wrote, if not truer. We are, as Erich Fromm
suggests, living in an era in which our capacity to disobey has atrophied to the
point that we are unaware, even, of how our obedience has become second nature.
Such an era is not unlike the one that produced Adolf Eichmann. As Fromm notes:

Eichmann is a symbol of the organization man, of the
alienated bureaucrat for whom men, women and children have become numbers.
He is a symbol of all of us. We can see ourselves in Eichmann. But the most
frightening thing about him is that after the entire story was told in terms
of his own admissions, he was able in perfect good faith to plead his
innocence. It is clear that if he were once more in the same situation he
would do it again. And so would we-and so do we. [32]

Fromm's remarks should give Americans pause. Americans pride
themselves on their individuality, yet that individuality is largely a myth.
While we have choices as consumers, larger structural forces condition our
public morality and impel conformity. The most despicable acts are perpetrated
by people who are otherwise moral, productive, well-socialized members of a
civilized community (such as in the recent Abu GhraibPrison
scandal in which the American and British government acknowledged the widespread
torturing and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by their military forces.).
As Kenneth Burke reminds us, the devastation wrought against Vietnam by the
United States in the 1960s “was made possible by humble, orderly, obedient,
peacefully behaving job-holders, who raise their families in the quiet suburbs,
and perhaps do not even spank their children.” [33] Recognizing this point is the
first step toward reining in the Eichmann in all of us.

Notes

I would like to thank Kimberly Elliot and Heidi Roat for
their helpful comments on previous drafts of this essay.

1. “Can Philosophers Help Their Clients?” The New
Leader (April 7, 1997), 12.

8. From 1798-1800, the United States fought an undeclared
naval war against France. Ellen C. Collier, “Instances of Use of United
States Forces Abroad, 1798-1993,” CRS Issues Brief, http://www.
fas.org/man/crs/crs_931007.htm.

10. The New Deal period is the most notable exception;
however, the beneficial structural changes of the New Deal have been abandoned
in recent years.

11. “Who Are We? Moral Universalism and Economic Triage,”
Diogenes 44 (1996), 11. Elsewhere, Rorty writes, “When I look back
over the history of the United States in my lifetime, I can see as many causes
for shame as for pride. For we seem always to have taken three steps forward
and two back.” See “American Pride, American Shame,” The Chronicle of
Higher Education (January 31, 2003), B10.